Over the summer 2023 I had the privilege of being brought on as an curatorial intern at the Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS). The primary task that I was assigned to was to assist the curatorial staff with the organization of a vast collection which they had stored in one of their many storage areas. This collection consisted of around nine-hundred boxes filled with thousands of items. Primarily these items were various glassware or ceramic items with some metal and earthenware items as well. Many of these items dated from the mid to late nineteenth century and came from many different donors.
As stated my primary task was to assist in the organization of this collection. In simple terms I would open a box and unwrap the items inside, then I would put the item onto a shelf in their respective rooms, and catalog in a spreadsheet where the item was placed. The collection itself was initially brought to the WHRS from another third party who had hired professional movers to pack the items. The process was slow going at times and fast at others depending on the amount of help we had each day. Typically one person would unbox the items while another would sort them onto a shelf while yet another person would update the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is a list of every box, all of which were numbered, and every item that was supposed to be in each box. Each item also had a unique accession number assigned to it. The accession number is a unique number allocated in the accession register and is only applied to objects formally acquired by the museum for the long term collections. There was no real organization to these numbers.
We sorted the items into rooms based on the material of the object. There were two rooms designated for glassware and two for ceramics and earthenware. When we placed an object, we recorded three numbers alongside each item in the spreadsheet. These three numbers, room number-unit number-shelf number, provide a precise location for every item. While many of these items will likely never leave the shelf they are on, it is still important to keep a record of where every item is in case it is needed, or needs to be tracked down. When moving an item from the shelf to put on display, a special sheet needs to be filled out and placed on the shelf where the item was. This is to show that the item had been put on display and the sheet contains such information as; the accession number of the item, where the item was put on display, the date the item was moved, and when the item might be put back onto the shelf.
There were many pieces of glass and ceramics that we unpacked but the most well known and possibly the most expensive was Tiffany Glass. Tiffany glass typically refers to the various types of glass developed and produced from 1878 to 1933 at the Tiffany Studios in New York City, by Louis Comfort Tiffany and a team of other designers, including Clara Driscoll, Agnes F. Northrop, and Frederick Wilson. The Tiffany glass in the collection of WRHS are of the Favrile glass design. Favrile glass is a type of iridescent art glass that was first developed by Louis Comfort Tiffany who patented the process for making the glass in 1894 and first produced the glass for manufacture in 1896 in his studio in New York. Favrile glass differs from other iridescent glasses due to the color that is ingrained in the glass itself, as well as the distinctive coloring. Tiffany won a grand prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition for his Favrile glass. Favrile glass also backs a large ornamental clock in Detroit’s Guardian Building. The largest and most significant glass-mosaic produced with Favrile glass is the Dream Garden (1916), a piece of glass artwork that was commissioned for the Curtis Publishing Company’s headquarters in Philadelphia. Artist Maxfield Parrish designed the work, and Tiffany Studios executed and installed it. Dream Garden is now owned by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where it is on display.
While the Tiffany glass in the collection was impressive, it was not my favorite. For a final project I was tasked with selecting several items to put into two display cases in the museum. There were several factors that influenced my decision, first was that the other two interns who were tasked with the other two cases chose to display items from our ceramics collection. With that in mind I decided to go with showing off glass items. Second; I wanted to display items with visual impact to catch the eyes of visitors to the museum. The cases I was tasked with are the two front ones, and so I wanted to find a way to bring attention to our work. This worked out well for me though since my favorite items fit just such a criteria. In one case I put in Ruby glass, and in the other I put Amberina glass. Both styles are visually stunning and quite well known as well. In addition to the items, we were also tasked to make brief descriptions of the items in our cases. Since each of my cases consisted of one style, my descriptions focused on that style of glass making.
Ruby Glass Description:
Ruby glass is a red glass made by including gold chloride in the glass mixture and heating the product twice. The knowledge of how to make ruby glass was known by the Romans but was lost. The technique was rediscovered in the 1600s in Bohemia, a province of the Holy Roman Empire. American glass makers began to make ruby glass in the mid 1800s calling it “Bohemian glass.” Most red glass produced today is no longer colored with gold. Instead other metals such as copper are used.
The description plate in the case also lists each item by its accession number as well as the name/names of the donor. Among the items that I selected for my case, the Ruby glass bowl on the left did not have an accession number. While this was rare, it did happen. Unfortunately this means that there is also no record of where the item came from. In this case however, simply using the description of “Ruby glass bowl” is enough for organizational use since the bowl is rather unique. The Ruby glass was by far my favorite due to its deep red color and intricate patterns layered into the glass.
Amberina Glass Description:
Amberina glass was first patented in the USA by Joseph Locke and Edward D. Libby in 1883. Locke was the head designer for the Cambridge factory of the New England Glass Works, and Libbey was the owner. In 1888 the New England Glass Works moved from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Toledo, Ohio and the company name was changed to W.L.Libbey & Son, and in 1892 the name was changed again to the Libbey Glass Company. After the glass had been heated and formed, the entire surface of the glass appeared yellow / amber in color. Amberina glass has gold combined into the molten glass mixture which is what gives the glass its distinctive color. After the initial heating and cooling of the glass, either the upper or lower section of the glass object was returned to the furnace for reheating which created the distinctive red coloring.
My time as an intern at WRHS was spent unpacking and organizing a large quantity of items in order to make space in storage for more stuff. There were many unique and amazing items we opened, as well some rather mundane objects that looked like something you can go to any store and buy for a few dollars. Overall I greatly enjoyed the mystery of unboxing and the coworkers that I worked alongside. Over the summer we opened a total of 365 boxes and around 2482 objects.
